There’s something special happening at the Ryerson Theatre in Toronto. It’s just after midnight, early Monday morning. Rose Glass, the director of Saint Maud, is about to present her first feature film to over a thousand horror fans.

“It was terrifying,” Glass will later tell us about the moments before her film screened — a funny description from a filmmaker who just presented an eerie movie about a reclusive nurse who becomes obsessed with saving the soul of a dying patient. Relief, for the director, didn’t set in until the first laugh from the audience. When they cheered and winced at all the right spots, Glass was almost floating.

Nothing, it seems, could have prepared her for the experience of seeing it with a Midnight Madness crowd. Whether you are a first-time filmmaker or Nicolas Cage joking about exploding alpacas, the audience at a Midnight Madness screening will embrace you with unfailing enthusiasm.

Of the 10 films that comprise the Midnight Madness program, Saint Maud is among the five movies from debut filmmakers. While last year, major studio films like The Predator and Halloween headlined the section, this year, films of that stature are conspicuously absent. Even with some familiar names in the lineup, like Richard Stanley and Takashi Miike, the majority of 2019’s program are from filmmakers new to genre fans.

In his third year as director of the program, Peter Kuplowski did not set out to feature so many new voices. The structure of the program came together after Kuplowski saw Jeff Barnaby’s second feature, Blood Quantum, which he scheduled for the section’s opening night. A zombie-film reinvented, set in an isolated Mi’gmaq community, the movie inspired Kuplowski to build Midnight Madness around fresh stories by underrepresented filmmakers. “I was interested in the way communities represent themselves on screen through genre,” says Kuplowski.

It was about seeing film used as a means of personal expression, social protest and representation. Challenging our expectations of genre cinema are movies like The Vigil, a mystical horror film set in the Orthodox Jewish community and Crazy World, the closing film, made by an Ugandan village, “with very meagre resources but so much passion, wit and ingenuity.”

In search of something he hasn’t seen before, Kuplowsky watches over 300 films a year looking for his Midnight Madness selection. He emphasizes that he doesn’t set himself quotas in terms of representation in the programming process. But, often, something new comes from filmmakers who have not previously had opportunities to tell their stories.

The program also pays homage to the ethos of the midnight movie. Not every genre film easily fits into a midnight slot. The movies need a certain momentum, and if they’re a slow burn, “it has to be a fuse making way to a very palpable explosion.” A midnight movie can be Sam Raimi, but it can also be transgressive arthouse cinema, like Alejandro Jodorowsky or David Lynch.

When Glass found out her film was playing as part of Midnight Madness, it made her just as nervous as excited. The section has a reputation for screening wild and crazy films and she wasn’t sure at first if her film would be a good fit. “But then, I realized, my film is pretty weird too. I was just too familiar with it,” she says. The audience’s enthusiasm only cemented that she was in the right place.

Glass wasn’t alone in her apprehension over Midnight Madness. Kuplowsky was also nervous about featuring such an unexpected lineup, but ultimately, he was won over by placing trust in the audience. “Whatever the movie is, you know the audience is going to play along,” he says. The Midnight Madness festival-goers have their own culture and traditions. They are a discerning group, but they’re also willing and open to whatever ride the filmmaker is going to take them on.

So far, Kuplowsky’s bet has paid off. The screenings have received the typical frenzy of enthusiasm from audiences, but this year, the critics have also been vocal in their praise of discoveries like Saint Maud and The Platform. A find like Saint Maud has become an example of how a greater diversity in filmmakers can push genres in new directions; it gives opportunities to start difficult conversations and address complex ideas. For instance, Blood Quantum uses horror tropes to tackle Canada’s past and present treatment of Indigenous people. It serves as a starting point for curious and engaged audience members to learn more.

If what has screened so far is any indication, the domain of genre cinema is expanding into new and exciting territories. Kuplowsky hopes his program this year will act as something of a wake-up call: “Genre films don’t have to be generic.”